You CAN have a wedding free of gender-role stereotypes

What did Marriage Equality change?

The obvious change (yay) was that the couple standing up in front of their guests, pledging their lives to one another, do not have to be one female bride and one male groom. You can be who you are, the gender you are, regardless of the gender of the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. As a result, the definition of marriage, required to be recited by every civil celebrant before a couple makes their vows, saw a man and a woman changed to two people.

A second positive change was to the terminology you can use when you make your vows.

The option of taking your best beloved as your husband, or wife, remains. So you can marry as husband and wife, husband and husband, or wife and wife. The option of using the gender-neutral word, spouse, also remains.

A new gender-neutral term was added. Couples can now pledge their lives to one another as partner-in-marriage.  Interestingly, while pre-Marriage Equality the use of the word partner was not permitted in a legal marriage ceremony, due to the ambiguity of the term, it was the term of choice for same sex couples having a non-legal wedding (commitment ceremony). Post Marriage Equality, same sex couples appear to overwhelmingly favour the use of husband and husband or wife and wife (and why wouldn't they, having fought so hard for it), a significant proportion of the heterosexual couples I marry are choosing to say partner-in-marriage.

It follows that you can, and should, feel comfortable with using your pronouns, whatever they are.

What about the paperwork?

Prior to Marriage Equality you had no choice. The relevant columns in the Notice of Intended Marriage were headed Bridegroom and Bride, with those terms (and order) transferred to your marriage certificates, both the official certificate that proves your marriage has been registered and the certificate you are presented with on the day.

Marriage Equality changed the column headings from  Bridegroom and Bride to Partner 1 and Partner 2 (allowing you to decide who would be which) and removed those terms from the Presentation Certificate.

Two sets of checkboxes were added to the Notice. How you chose to describe yourselves (Groom, Bride, or Partner) and your sex (Male, Female, X). So there was still a whisper of the previous hierarchy in the order ... but the good news is that the term sex  has been discarded in favour of gender and non-binary now replaces X , so the options will be male, female, non-binary.  Providing gender information is optional, and will not transferred onto your marriage certificate. It is for statistical purposes only.

On your official marriage certificate the term you choose (Groom, Bride, or Partner), and only that, will appear. Your gender is not mentioned.

Making sure your ceremony isn't traditionally gendered

The way it has always been done. Seven words that make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Tradition isn't law. In many ways, wedding tradition is peer pressure from long-dead Queen Victoria, long-dead English aristocrats, and the white wedding industry. Take that to heart.

• your wedding party doesn't have to be divided along strictly gender lines
• there are many more ways of getting yourselves up the front than one person walking towards the other
• one of you does not have to be given away to the other
• you can wear whatever you like without any regard to heteronormative styling.

Regardless of how much pressure others may apply to try to make you confirm to gender stereotypes, you are legally entitled to ignore them.

Related posts

• Your wedding party - busting the myths
• You, Your Wedding, and Trans-Gender and Non-Binary Inclusivity
• Getting married when you don't identify with a gender
  
• Bride promising to obey until death? Not any more
• 'You may kiss your bride'
• Same Sex Ceremonies - Negotiating the Gendered Nature of Ceremony Traditions